Date: 5–31 August 2026
Time: 2.30pm
Venue: Gilded Balloon Teviot, Turret
Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Reviewed by: Honour De Pledge
I got off the train in Edinburgh on Saturday with only one play in my diary and it wasn’t this one. No, I had not even heard of this ‘Turn the Cloth’ by Eve Miller until I gladly accepted a flyer walking down the sunny and chaotic streets after my ritualistic morning coffee at Thomas J Walls. As I was only going to be in the city for one day, I knew I needed to put more on my agenda. I saw the words ‘horror’, ‘folklore’, ‘girlhood’ and I think I had already bought my ticket. An hour later, I took my seat to watch my first show at my first ever Fringe.
My unsure expectations were met with a room full of shadow and a beautiful opening voice-over set alongside music that was in equal parts enchanting and haunting. The tone was set. When figures appeared wearing bright white wedding dresses, the tone set firmer. You are almost fooled into thinking it is going to be a period piece when one character enters wearing a bright pink/red raincoat over her dress and you think, ‘Was she late? Did she forget to take that off?’. Our scene lies in what seems a small house, around a wooden table upon which two unmarried young women ‘turn the cloth’ as part of an old ritual to protect themselves against the villainous ‘kelpie’ of Scottish folklore. The third, who wears the raincoat, does not join them at the table as they wait for a fourth, missing friend.
Miller’s tale is not one that just illuminates the ‘old ways’ but the new ways too, and how they tussle with each other precisely because their existences are so tightly interwoven and entangled, just like sisters. “Just because it’s the way it’s always been doesn’t mean it’s the way it should be” meets “All we can do is keep the tradition” in a way that is refreshingly equally critical and supportive of each argument. Miller carefully balances tradition’s stuffy rigidity and wisdom with modernity’s self-righteousness and heart.
Turn the Cloth is much more than a historically inspired horror story (although it is a very good one of those), it’s a story of girlhood, of the inherent embarrassment of youth, of friendship, hatred, first loves, and feeling at once defined by, and too large for, the small town where you grew up. It’s a tale of the imagination of a nation and just how deep the old tales run.
The dramaturgy was interestingly thought out, the casting perfect, the singing hauntingly beautiful, and the plot tight and unexpected. I don’t want to spoil too much as I highly enjoyed going in blind. Turn the Cloth set my bar for the Fringe high. Congratulations to all involved. Women shrieking always makes for a good climax.
★★★★★ – Excellent
